Description

Literary Nonfiction. Translated from the German by Michael Eskin. Andrea Köhler's beautiful and profound reflections on life's interstitial spaces—the queue, the waiting room, the place held for two when only one has arrived—at once poetic and philosophical, intimate and analytical, form the perfect antidote to the headlong rush of our culture. It is one of those rare books that, like Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo, makes you feel that you must change your life, or perhaps more urgently, the way you think about your life.

"The way we live now is by making war on human—and humane—time. Historians will record that we were complicit in the dictatorship of speed and the repudiation of patience. But not all of us; and certainly not Andrea Köhler, who has written a book dripping with wisdom. Köhler has an exquisite feeling for the tempo and the temporality that is required for a decent and beautiful life. There are deep and true observations on every page. PASSING TIME is a gift to the resistance."—Leon Wieseltier

"Apart from being clear-eyed and utterly original, PASSING TIME is also irresistible. It manages to make you think that you're as smart as it is. I read it twice just to treat myself."—Richard Ford

"This is one of the most thoughtful, insightful, and enchanting books I have read in a long while. Köhler draws on personal experience as well as the testaments of literature and philosophy to show how waiting, in its various modalities, lies at the heart of the human condition. A book to be reread many times."—Robert Pogue Harrison

"All the excitements and longueurs of anticipation are fully satisfied in this gem of a book. Andrea Köhler's beautiful and profound reflections on life's interstitial spaces—the queue, the waiting room, the place held for two when only one has arrived—at once poetic and philosophical, intimate and analytical, form the perfect antidote to the headlong rush of our culture. I picked this slim volume up in a bookstore and didn't leave until I had almost finished it. It is one of those rare books that, like Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," makes you feel that you must change your life, or perhaps more urgently, the way you think about your life. Truant time is rescued and restored here, and nothing could waste it less than to read this lovely book."—Jonathan Wilson

"…there might be more living done in our in between moments than in those we have big names for. Waiting in line, hoping you'll get a ticket; waiting for someone to call; waiting to find the courage to make the call; waiting to hear results. We live in abeyance. What a beautiful book."—André Aciman

"Graced with lyricism, PASSING TIME is an engaging meditation on the ways in which human beings are forced—and choose—to mark time, from earliest childhood to the final moments of life. This is an unsparing, yet often poetic, essay on the ordeals and pleasures inherent in the universal experience of waiting."—Jamie Venise

"…a book of great intelligence and rare beauty…"—Neue Züricher Zeitung

"What are we doing when we aren't doing anything? We're waiting. Or, as Köhler would prefer, we're passing time. As Mark Lilla notes in his foreword: 'Man is the waiting animal…What exactly is it to wait?' Köhler, the cultural correspondent for a Swiss daily newspaper and winner of the 2003 Berlin Book Critics Prize, posits, 'waiting is a state in which time holds its breath in order to remind us of our mortality. Its motto is not carpe diem but memento mori.' Now available in English, her extended essay is a hybrid: part meditation, part philosophy, part autobiographical musings. One comment about waiting leads to another, which leads to some author's comment on the first comment, which leads to another comment. The book reads like a string of epigrammatic musings. Köhler goes on to describe all manners of waiting and their significance, creating a sort of taxonomy of waiting. There's anxiety, hesitation, expectation, laggardness, etc. She draws on a wide variety of writers, mostly European, to help her along the way: Barthes, Benjamin, Foucault, Camus, Blanchot, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Peter Handke, the self-proclaimed 'lover of waiting.' Köhler describes him as 'one of the staunchest defenders of slowness in our time.' As she sees it, waiting is a good thing. It's not a waste of time but rather a use of time. She also references Richard Linklater's film Before Sunrise and its sequel, Before Sunset, both of which address an ages-old question: is there someone out there, waiting for me? Of course, Waiting for Godot makes an appearance. Poor Vladimir and Estragon 'practice waiting for its own sake and with no particular goal in mind.' We wait with them, confronting matters of existence and eschatology while time is passing. As Vladimir says, 'it would have passed in any case.' A lovely jeu d'esprit for those waiters who like their abeyance with a touch of the metaphysical." —Kirkus Reviews

"In these meditations, Swiss journalist Köhler argues that in an era where time is shaped by technology (the instantaneity of e-mail, the delays imposed by customer service 'please wait' messages), 'the art of waiting needs to be learned.' Her book is modest in size but abundant in content, and allusive but fully accessible. It insists on 'the joyful aspects of waiting, slowness, and rest.' Köhler shares a relaxed, cosmopolitan erudition with the reader. A veritable pantheon of distinguished writers accompany her reflections, among them Samuel Beckett, Dante, Homer, and Marcel Proust. What waiting means, as it occurs at different times and in different places, is the governing question. Köhler observes waiting in the train station, in the doctor's office, and in bureaucratic agencies. Going from the waiting of children for celebrations to the waiting of condemned prisoners for execution, she conveys a sense of both the gift and the anxiety of time. Along the way are enriching tidbits: an etymological digression into the word 'wait' itself, a historical reminder of the appearance of a railroad timetable. What haunts this lively challenge to the passage of time is the 'paradox of an overabundance of too little time' in contemporary life." —Publishers Weekly